Name: 1945 – Germany surrenders to Allies
Start: 2023-05-07T00:00:00-04:00
End: 2023-05-07T23:59:59-04:00

1945 – Odd Nansen evacuated from Neuengamme on White Buses to Denmark, then Sweden.

April 28, 2023 1945 – Odd Nansen evacuated from Neuengamme on White Buses to Denmark, then Sweden.

From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps

“I want to thank Tim Boyce for this . . . . It would be lost to history if people like Tim Boyce did not devote the effort and time and expense–a good part of his life–to preserve the Odd Nansen story. It is a moving and gripping story. . . .”

–U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal

Hailed by The New Yorker as “among the most compelling documents to come out of the war,” From Day to Day is a World War II concentration camp diary—one of only a handful ever translated into English—secretly written by Odd Nansen, a Norwegian political prisoner. Arrested in January 1942, Nansen, son of polar explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen (Nobel Peace Prize 1922) was held captive for the duration of the war in various Nazi camps in Norway and Germany.

Nansen’s diary entries detail his palpable longing for his wife and family, his constantly frustrated hopes for release, the quiet strength and sometimes ugly prejudices of his fellow prisoners, and his horror at the especially barbaric treatment reserved for the Jews. The diary brilliantly illuminates Nansen’s daily struggle, not only to survive, but to preserve his sanity and maintain his humanity in a world engulfed by fear and hate.

First published in English in 1949, From Day to Day had been out of print for almost seventy years. The new edition contains entries and sketches never previously available in English. It also features a new introduction and extensive annotations by Timothy Boyce and a preface by Thomas Buergenthal, whose life (as a ten year-old) Nansen saved while in Sachsenhausen, later recounted in his own memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy.

March 2023

1945 – Allied forces cross the Rhine River

1938 – The Anschluss: Germany annexes Austria

1939 – Nansen witnesses German takeover of Czechoslovakia

1945 – Odd Nansen transported to Neuengamme via White Buses

April 2023

1940 – German invasion of Norway

1933 – Odd Nansen’s daughter Siri Nansen was born

1945 – Sachsenhausen (including Buergenthal) liberated

1940 – Josef Terboven appointed Reichskommissar of Norway

1945 – Odd Nansen evacuated from Neuengamme on White Buses to Denmark, then Sweden.

1945 – Last gassing of the Holocaust occurs at Mauthausen

1945 – Hitler commits suicide

May 2023

1945 – Germany surrenders to Allies

Events

March 2023

April 2023

May 2023

From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps